Report to recommend free-to-air Ashes TV coverage

The England cricket team's home Ashes matches with Australia could be forced on to free-to-air television under a review of televised sport in Britain, reports said Thursday.

The inquiry is expected to place the Ashes under the heading of the "crown jewels" of British sport which must be seen by the widest possible audience when its recommendations are published on Friday, several newspapers said.

Ashes matches in this year's series were only shown on pay-per-view broadcaster Sky, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

The report by David Davies, a former executive of the English Football Association, is also expected to list football World Cup and European Championship qualifiers involving England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It is equally likely to recommend "protecting" the Wimbledon tennis championship and the Open golf championship, which are already shown on terrestrial television in Britain.

Supporters of changes to the current system argue that England's win in the 2005 Ashes, shown on free-to-air Channel Four, was watched by millions more viewers than this year's series broadcast by Sky.

But the government is not obliged to follow the recommendations, and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) will protest that the financial impact would be devastating for the sport which has a 300 million pound (500 million dollar, 330 million euro) deal with Sky.

An ECB spokesman said the organisation had not seen the report, adding: "We have not been given the courtesy of being shown the report ahead of publication."

The Evening Standard newspaper claimed that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was prepared to accept the recommendations to strip Sky of its exclusive TV rights in revenge for his treatment at the hands of the Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid.

Brown phoned Murdoch to complain about the Sun's criticism of his government's handling of the war in Afghanistan.

The prime minister's office said the pair spoke on Tuesday at the height of a row over Brown's apparent misspelling of a dead soldier's name in a hand-written letter of condolence to the victim's grieving mother.